What is a website?

Ok so this might sound a bit like a silly question, but stick with me for a moment.

Try to think about your own experience of websites. Perhaps online banking, booking a holiday, researching about a new gadget for the kitchen or looking for gifts.  In all cases when you use the internet you are doing so to find information or to perform a task. The best websites are those that allow you to do this efficiently. Put too many hurdles in your way and you will move on to another.

I see too many websites with the following issues

1. Too many moving and scrolling images or moving text flying around
2. Old and out of date content, including dead blogs or outdated price list
3. Fancy drop down menus that are hard to click on or worst still – just do not work!  (If you must have one then please do provide a text only alternative).
4. Loads of text which goes a bit like this “We have been established for 15 years and have do many clients” bla bla
5. No easy to find contact info
6. No quick summary of what you do and who for.  This needs to be on each page so that people land on your website (might not be the home page first) that they can decide if they want to stick around.
7. Dinky text that makes me have to squint
8. No thought at all into layout of the copy, with text just plonked on the page
9. Silly splash screens that “welcome me to the website” before I can actually read the content.

Your website needs to focus on your content, the information you want your visitors to know. Content that is bang up to date, relevant to the visitor, easy to digest and easy to find.  It’s not called information technology for nothing you know….

Website Design | 23.11.2009 17:17 | No Comments